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^^^P^Biiilll^al?]K;h;'l^i''iiiil'^i^':'^ ■ ^ ■;<■ 



A REMINISCENCE 



OP THE 



KANSAS CONFLICT 




BY 



EDMUND G. ROSS 



PioNBER, Soldier, Senator 



ALBUQUBRQUB. NEW MEXICO 



Albright & Andercon 



^?5 



Jiliat ^upptmh 3ffortg f ^ara Ago 

It may be an old story — "ancient history," and all that— rmt 
there is possibly an admonition in it — and it may be interesting 
at this time, in view of the acquisitions of territory that have 
already resulted, and are likely to result in still larger measure, 
from the existing war with Spain, and the possibility of resulting 
complications in other directions and in other ways, at home and 
abroad — as occurred in our last foreign war (with Mexico) — 
then incited largely by the demand of slavery for an increased 
area of territory — this time from the disposal or management of 
foreign territorial acquisition now in political slavery and not 
much better circumstanced than though in physical slavery. 

It is an item of national history that happened, or rather, was 
begun now many years ago, and well nigh forgotten by this gen- 
eration. But it -wWl bear re-telling. It is a bit of "ancient his- 
tory ' ' that will be interesting if not valuable now. 

In the entire history of the United States there has never oc- 
curred a political incident fraught with more far-reaching con- 
sequences in the line of human enfranchisement than was the 
conclusion of the controversy over the question of slavery in 
Kansas in 1856, now forty-two years ago. It marked the down- 
fall of slavery in the United States. 

That institution received its death blow in that struggle and 
its resulting disbarment from the territories of the Southwest, 
but its friends could not realize it. 

It may be said that the struggle over slavery in Kansas was in 
a logical sense the beginning of the war of the Rebellion. The 
same issue — the estoppel of the westward march of slavery and 
thereby the enlargement and preservation of the area of free- 
dom — but upon a vastly larger scale — practically the same par- 
ties, individually, were participants — the results sought were 
logically the same, and less than a decade of time, from the be- 
ginning to the end of the struggle, intervened to separate the two 
occasions, or stages of the great drama. 

Slavery refused to accept the logic of the decision that had 
been reached in Kansas as conclusive to restrain the further ex- 
pansion of its territorial area, and appealed to arms. 

The Act of Congress known as the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 
passed May 30, 1854, creating and opening to settlement the Ter- 
ritories of Kansas and Nebraska, then known only as a part of 
the Indian countrv of the vast Rocky Mountain region, pro- 



vided that nothing contained therein should be construed to ap- 
ply to or affect the provisions of the Act respecting fugitives 
from justice, or ''persons escaping from the service of their mas- 
ters" (the fugitive slave law of 1850), and extended the provi- 
sions of that act over all parts of Kansas and Nebraska and the 
Central West ; but compromised on the proviso that when admit- 
ted to the Union as states they should be received ' ' \dth or with- 
out slavery," as their respective constitutions might prescribe 
at the time of their application for admission. 

That act repealed the Wilmot Proviso of 1850, prohibiting the 
further extension of slavery into the new territories in the West, 
and, in effect, opened all that vast region to its introduction. 

It provided, also, that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, en- 
titled "An act respecting fugitives from justice and persons 
escaping from the service of their masters, ' ' an act but little less 
drastic than the subsequent act of 1850, should be in full force 
and effect in the new territories, as also the Fugitive Slave Act 
of 1850. 

Among the final provisions of the Act of 1854, it was enacted 
that the Constitution and all laws of the United States which 
were not locally inapplicable, should have the same force and 
effect within the said Territory of Kansas or elsewhere within 
the United States, except the eighth section of the Act prepar- 
atory to the admission of Missouri to the Union, which, "being 
inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress 
with slavery in the states and territories as recognized by the 
legislation of 1850 commonly called the compromise measures, is 
hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent 
and meaning of this Act not to legislate slavery into any territory 
or state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people 
thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic insti- 
tutions in their owm way, subject to the Constitution of the 
United States. Provided, that nothing herein contained shall be 
construed to revive or put in force any law or regulation which 
may have existed prior to the sixth of March, 1820, either pro- 
tecting, establishing, prohibiting or abolishing slavery. 

The following is that portion of the Act of Congress referred 
to, of March 6, 1820, establishing the State of Missouri and 
known as the "Missouri Compromise," and which was repealed 
by this Act : 

Sec. 8. That in all that territory ceded by France to the 
United States under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of 
36 degrees and 30 minutes north latitude, not included within 
the limits of the state contemplated by this Act, slavery and in- 
voluntary servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crime. 
shall he and is hereby forever prohibited. 



^U^- 



^ /5 ' / 7 



That Act of 1820 was understood and accepted, at the time, 
as in the nature of a compromise compact between the pro and 
anti-slavery i^arties in Congress and the country, and intended 
to take the question of slavery, ^\^th its attendant agitation and 
turmoil, out of the political arena. 

The further westward spread of slavery was thus estopped 
at the western boundary of Missouri and north of 36 :30, the 
south line of Kansas. That was in the nature of and intended 
to be a perpetual treaty between the states then classed as the 
Northern and Southern, or free and slave states — a solemn com- 
pact that, in consideration of slavery being recognized and per- 
mitted in all the territory' of the United States south of 36 :30, 
no farther effort would ever be made to extend it north of that 
line — that the dispute over slavery was thus settled, and sup- 
posed to be finally, by the assignment to it of a specific domain 
as its empire and inheritance forever, and within which it should 
never more be disturbed — in effect, that the theretofore prevailing 
agitation of tiie slavery question should at once and forever cease. 

Thus, by a solemn and in a sense national compact, Missouri 
was admitted as a slave state, and all the then unsettled and 
comparatively little known country to the westward, and north 
of 3G :oO, was forever dedicated to freedom. That was the com- 
pact of 1820. 

Slavery was then a comparatively weak institution of the 
South. It had no exceptionally strong hold upon the general 
public, even there, and the great mass of the people of the North 
were as a rule indifferent. 

Subsequently the cotton gin and other appliances were in- 
vented for the more profitable utilization of slave labor; slaves 
began to increase in numbers and value, and the institution of 
slavery to strengthen its hold upon the commercial and indus- 
trial elements of the South, and continued to strengthen from 
year to year. The owners of slaves began to seek wider fields for 
the employment and sale of their chattels, and to that end de- 
manded the abrogation of the restriction enacted in the Missouri 
compromise legislation of 1820. 

With that demand the antagonism in the North toward slavery 
began to intensify and spread, frictions developed along the bor- 
der lines and there were not infrequent clashings there between 
the supporters and the opponents of slavery. 

That institution wanted more room, and was looking with a 
greedy eye to the lands of Kansas and Nebraska, and the coun- 
tries west, which it had surrendered in the treaty act of 1820. 

It was from year to year becoming more apparent, with the 
continuing multiplicaton of slaves in the South, that without 
room for further expansion, the institution of slavery must in 



time "eat itself out." Its increasing numbers and physical 
force were beginning to threaten the peace and general welfare 
of the South. It was approaching a condition of congestion, and 
must have more room or die of suffocation. 

The slave-holder saw in the fair lands of the then vacant ter- 
ritories of the West, with their great open, unoccupied fields, a 
possible outlet and relief from the threatened over-crowding and 
not impossible resulting turmoil and bloodshed in their own 
homes. 

So, in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was passed, opening all 
that region to slavery. The crowning device by which that end 
was supposed to have been consummated was the proviso con- 
tained in that portion of the bill relating to slavery — "that the 
Constitution and all the laws of the United States which are not 
locally inapplicable, shall have the same force and effect within 
the said territory or elsewhere in the United States, except the 
eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri 
into the Union, approved March 6, 1820, which being inconsistent 
with the principles of non-intervention by Congress with slavery 
in the states and territories, as recognized by the legislation of 
1850, commonly called the 'Compromise measure,' is hereby de- 
clared inoperative and void ; it being the true intent and mean- 
ing of this act not to legislate slavery into any territory or state, 
nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof per- 
fectly free to form and regulate their institutions in thier own 
way, subject to the Constitution of the United States. Provided, 
that nothing herein contained shall be construed to revive or put 
in force any law or regulation which may have existed prior to 
the Act of the 6th of March, 1824, either protecting, establishing, 
prohibiting or abolishing slavery." 

The passage of this measure proved, however, instead of a bul- 
wark for the protection and extension of slavery, or a final set- 
tlement of that wearing question, to be the beginning of the end 
of that institution in America. Though designed ostensibly for 
the pacification of the then sharp and threatening controversy, 
and agreed upon as a compromise which the groat majority of 
the people of that day hoped, and many believed, would be the 
end of contention on that subject, and that thenceforward the 
country would have peace at least, so far as that question was 
concerned, the result was different. Peace was not attainable 
on those terms. 

At once, upon the enactment by Congress of the law opening 
the new territory to settlement and to slavery, concerted and 
powerful movements were put on foot in both North and South 
for the capture and control of the new domain — in the South for 
the implantation there of slavery— in the North for Its preven- 



tioii and the perpetual dedication of that vast domain to the in- 
stitutions of freedom. In the South it was a race for life for 
slavery — a race for liberty in the North. 

Lying, as the then new territory of Kansas did, immediately 
upon the border of a then slave state (Missouri), and adjacent 
to others in the Southwest, instant and concerted movements 
from those states speedily captured the new domain. An elec- 
tion for members of a legislature was at once held, and a pro- 
slavery legislature was elected, which promptly proceeded to 
enact laws for the recognition and protection of slavery therein, 
and providing extreme punishments for their violation 

So, for a time, the swift-footed Southerner of that day had 
it all his own way, and the existence of slavery in Kansas, and 
in an aggravated and offensive form, speedily became a fact of 
conditions, apparently beyond successful contention. 

That pro-slavery legislature proceeded at once to enact what 
was known as a "slave-code," formally declaring the lawful ex- 
istence of slavery in Kansas, and replete with punishments for 
attempts to escape from slavery, and for aiding or abetting such 
attempts, of varying degrees of slavery rivaling the era of bar- 
barism, and wholly unexampled in the annals of enlightened and 
Christianized civilization. 

No negro or mulatto was permitted to be a witness against a 
white man in a suit at law. 

IMarriages between white persons and mulattos were pro- 
hibited and punished by fine and imprisonment. 

Slaves were forbidden to leave the plantation on which they 
belonged, without a pass from the master, and violations of the 
law were punished with the lash. 

The schools were closed to the children of negroes, both free 
and slave. 

Patrols were established by law to visit negro quarters, and 
any slave found at any assemblage of slaves without a pass from 
his master was punished with the lash. 

Aiding or assisting the escape of a slave was punishable with 
death, or imprisonment for not less than ten years. 

It was enacted that "if any person shall print, write, intro- 
duce into, publish or circulate, or cause to be brought into, 
printed, written, published or circulated, or shall knowingly as- 
sist or aid in bringing into, printing, publishing or circulating 
within this territory, any book, paper, pamphlet, magazine, hand- 
bill, or circular containing any statements, arguments, opinions, 
sentiments, doctrine, advice or inuendo calculated to produce a 
disorderly, dangerous or rebellious disposition among the slaves 
of this territory, or to induce such slaves to escape from the serv- 
ice of their master, or to resist their authority, he shall be guilty 



of felony, and be punished by imprisonment and hard labor for a 
term of not less than five years. ' ' 

These few examples fairly illustrate the nature of the control 
that had captured the new territory. 

This brief recital of the conditions then prevailing will doubt- 
less be a startling development to the great mass of the people of 
the United States of today, but forty years ago it was different. 
The people of the North, as a rule, looked complacently upon a 
state of affairs that would today shock them beyond expression, 
but were then too generally regarded as a matter of course, as 
illustrating only a part of conditions which concerned only the 
people of the South, and of no particular interest or concern to 
those of the North. In fact, an "abolitionist" of those days was 
regarded by many people. North and South, as a meddler with 
other people's business, and one seeking to produce disturbance 
and turmoil about matters in which he could with no rightful- 
ness or propriety intervent — in short, as a disturber of the pub- 
lic peace and a dangerous character. 

The institution of slavery had from an early day in the his- 
tory of the government been beset by a growing hostility that 
began in whispers but had finally as its insatiable maw had, from 
year to year, become enlarged with its own devourings, groMoi to 
giant proportions that threatened to destroy the government that 
had nursed it into vigor and force, if not permitted to control it, 
and thus invited a public hostility that refused longer to pay it 
homage or register its desires. 

Failing to secure continued recognition and perpetuation by 
statute law, it finally accepted the gauge of battle implied in 
the proposition to leave the question of slavery in the new ter- 
ritories to those who might succeed to the control of them as 
states. The last hope of slavery was in capturing Kansas ; thus 
to decide in its favor the alternative set out in the Kansas-Ne- 
braska bill, and for a time the result secured, but only secured in 
doubt. 

Many had gone into the disputed land from the South, and 
others from the North and East. It was apparent that the issue 
was fraught with life or death to slavery, and the efforts of its 
friends were correspondingly radical and in a spirit of reckless 
desperation that found echo throughout the South. 

The framers of the fugitive slave act of 1850 had made their 
boasts in advance that they would make an iron-bound law, so 
framed that it could not fail of enforcement, and imprison and 
pauperize every official who might fail in its thorough execution 
in return of escaped slaves, and in Kansas they proposed to 
put their opponents to the test in the enforcement of that and 



other and (luite as odious, territorial laws for the punishment 
of interference of every kind with slavery. 

For a time these laws were applied with success. Kansas had 
been completely captured by the pro-slavery hosts that thronged 
over the border immediately upon the enactment of the bill for 
the organization of the territory. 

The triumph of the captors of the new domain was, however, 
shoit-lived. The slower moving North and East were aroused, 
and the earlier months of 1856 witnessed a spectacle that had 
seldom if ever before occurred in the history of political disputes. 

The entire North seemed aroused, from IMaine to the Missis- 
sippi, and at once began a movement of people — singly, in 
groups, in families, and in colonies — by railway and in stage- 
coach, in wagons and on horseback, and even on foot — covering 
all roads leading westward — all heading unvaringly for a 
single point — the new territory of Kansas, and all enthused with 
a single thought and determined purpose, the extirpation of slav- 
ery there and the devotion of that land to the principles and in- 
stitutions of freedom — to establish at that gateway to the great 
plains and t!ie farther Avest a dead line at which slavery should 
be thenceforth forever barred. 

On the 20th day of May, 1856, I had the honor to lead one of 
these colonies out from the city of Mihvaukee on its long jour- 
ney to the disputed land. At the beginning of its march of some 
six hundred miles it comprised some half-dozen families in can- 
vas-covered wagons drawn by ox teams. Some dozen or so of 
young men on foot accompanied the expedition and were distrib- 
uted among the several families as helpers in care of the teams, 
and of the camp, and comprised the principal fighting force of 
the colony, should there, as was then anticipated, be any need 
of such. 

The direct road to Kansas, through Illinois and Missouri, was 
then closed against immigrants from the North, several small ex- 
peditions from that region having attempted to pass that way 
and had been turned back by the then hostile sentiment of that 
section toward Northern immigration into Kansas. 

So this expedition was forced, or at least deemed it expedient, 
to take the longer road westwardly across the states of Wiscon- 
sin, Towa and Nebraska, and then southward into Kansas and 
on down through a then unsettled region to the then young and 
aspiring city of Topeka. the prospective capital of the new state. 

That was the end of the journey of the colony as such, and 
from there many of its members ultimately scattered out to vari- 
ous parts of the territory, most of the young men, however, going 
into the ranks of the Free State army and doing valiant service 
in that great cause. 



All along the way across the states named, additions to the 
colony had been received from time to time, till, as it left Ne- 
braska City and turned southward into Kansas, it comprised 
nearly a hundred wagons generally freighted with families and 
their household goods — the wives and children and their all — 
and some two hundred men on foot, scattered throughout the 
length of the train for defensive purposes if needed, and all 
armed with some form of weapon and ready for any emergency 
that Avas at all likely to occur in the way of opposition to their 
entry into the disputed land, which was threatened from several 
points on the way, but was never attempted. 

That expedition may not inaptly be likened, in some respects, 
to the extraordinary movement of the Children of Israel when 
they moved out from Egypt in search of a new home and free- 
dom in a promised land — and yet unlike in that these people 
were not fleeing from an Egyptian bondage or other adverse 
conditions, but marching on to the deliverance of a new Canaan 
from a threatened bondage as odious as that of the Israelites were 
fleeing from in Egypt, and to erect in the new and disp'uted land 
a temple of liberty as grand and grateful as that their fathers 
had built before them in a land they had conquered from an 
equally deadly foe. 

Nor was there any Egyptian pursuit of "horsemen and char- 
iots" to make them afraid, for their caravan was freighted with 
the benizons of those they had left in the home-land, and with 
prayer for their success in the great work of delivering the 
princely domain to which they were destined from the curse of 
human slavery which had enveloped it and threatened to become 
national. 

Nor were they driven out by any lack of affection for their old 
homes ; but, moved by a high and holy purpose to stay the spread 
of a slavery that cursed the land and vaunted its purpose to 
make it all slave, they had embarked in this last great effort to 
stay its spread and deliver the nation from its blight. 

Nor were they led about through the way of the wilderness by 
a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, but were 
led steadily on by a fixed purpose to dedicate to freedom a new 
land, .to found there a home for freedom that should endure as 
a perpetual bar to all future encroachments of slavery in North 
America. 

It was a hegira quite as notable, in its lofty purpose and benefi- 
cent results, as was that of the Children of Israel out of Egypt, 
and at the end of their jonrneyings was "war, pestilence and 
famine," but they faltered not, nor wearied, for they foresaw, 
in the faith that had moved them, beyond and above all, a home 
that was not only fair to look upon, but in a land they had saved 



to the domain of freedom, and in which they had established, to 
endure forever, a wall across the westward path of slavery that 
should stand as a monument to their love of liberty, and, more 
than they knew, establish a force that should forever crush from 
the minds of men the diabolical doctrine that man can have prop- 
erty in man. 

The end of each succeeding day's journey was typical of Amer- 
ican life and characteristics. An early halt gave opportunity 
for the preparation of the evening meal by the housewife, and 
for grazing and corralling the teams before the darkness should 
fall, while the children, released from the day's confinement in 
the wagons, improved the opportunity for romp and play; and 
to their elders welcome relief from the weary tedium and plod- 
ding of the journey, while they discussed the incidents of the 
day's march, the stray bits of news picked up on the way, and 
the all-absorbing and never tiring topic of the issue in Kansas — 
what they would find and what they would do on their arrivel 
there, and of song and story, all from time to time interspersed 
with the music of a violin, and not infrequently closing the even- 
ing with a ' ' dance on the green ' ' before retiring for the night. It 
was r.ot only a typical American enterprise, but was carried out 
to full fruition by typical Americans. 

It is more than a simile of speech to say that that caravan was 
freighted with the hopes of liberty-loving people throughout 
America. Though the immediate issue of that day was freedom 
for Kansas, it meant vastly more than that, as the grand sequel 
proved. It meant not only the deliverance of Kansas, but of 
America, from the curse of human slavery. 

It was apparent to those who "looked ahead" that the time 
was not far away when the continuing frictions and local out- 
breaks that had in later years come to mark the relations of 
what were then known as the "border states," the states lying 
and adjacent to the Ohio river, on both sides of the line dividing 
the free and slave states — would, at a not remote day, reach a 
point that would demand the removal of the cause of those fric- 
tions, either by the destruction of slavery of its extension to the 
entire North. 

There were also on both sides of that line those M^ho were ready 
to sanction the sundering of the Eepublic on the question of 
slavery, but those v.ho looked beyond foresaw that that could but 
still farther and vastly complicate the conditions by stimulating 
raids and reprisals, each upon the other side, of an international 
character, and lead to a condition of friction that could result 
only in waste and weakness to both, and in the end invite for- 
eign intervention and tiio final practical absorption of both sec- 
tions into some form of European control, under the influence 



of foreign machination, and ultimately division, disintegration 
and practical extinction as an independent nation. 

Without generally realizing it, the people of America that day 
stood in the presence of a danger vastly greater than any that 
had ever before, or has ever since, been presented — the danger 
of being parceled out, as the ultimate result of internal frictions 
and bickerings over the question of slavery, among the gerat 
powers of Europe as mere dependencies to royalty — to be ab- 
sorbed in detail and their vitality sapped for the maintenance of 
European aristocracies. 

It therefore became apparent, more especially to those in the 
North who could look the situation deliberately and fearlessly in 
the face, that slavery must be removed from the confines of the 
nation, or the Union must perish ; that America must be all free 
or all slave, and that the latter alternative was simply an impos- 
sibility. It must therefore be all free. 

It was manifest that the friends of slavery expected to control 
the vote that Kansas should give. They counted much upon the 
proximity and celerity of movement of the abundant pro-slavery 
forces immediately at the door of the new territory, as also, on 
the other hand, of the long distances that separated the Free 
State forces from the Kansas border; as, also, again, upon the 
proverbial inertia of Northern blood. 

So it came to a question of bullets as well as ballots, and then 
there was war in that land. It was then that war begun, logical- 
ly and in point of fact, the war of the Rebellion. The actual, 
underlying question was not, merely, whether Kansas should be 
a free or slave state — but whether in reality, as a vital, force- 
ful condition, there should be any free states in the Union. 

The struggle in Kansas had been protracted, and at times the 
result seemed in doubt, but it now came to a speedy conclusion. 

Late in the summer of 1856, a few weeks after the arrival of 
the Milwaukee colony, what was claimed by its friends to be a 
superior pro-slavery force, crossed the southeastern border of 
Missouri into Kansas, in boastful confidence of its ability and 
avowing its purpose to end the struggle by a decisive blow that 
would crush all opposition and establish slavery and an unques- 
tioned slave-holding control in that territory and in the state 
organization that was to speedily follow. 

They were met on the soil of Kansas by a force of Free State 
men composed in good part of the men of the colony I had led 
into Kansas a few weeks previously. 

There was a show of battle, a few men were wounded, but the 
invaders, speedily realizing the disparity of the opposnig forces 
and the determination and apparent ability of the Kansas people 



to hold that country for the institutions of freedom, withdrew 
anil retreated back across the border into Missouri. 

That was the end of the Kansas war. The advocates of slavery 
were defeated. The issue upon which North and South had 
marshaled their opposing forces was settled and Kansas was free. 
From that day the struggle to make Kansas a slave state was 
ended. The friends of slavery had submitted their cause to the 
gauge of battle and had been defeated, and the vast region to 
the ^\•l•st and northwest was forever saved from the curse of 
human slavery liy the dead-wall of anti-slavery rifles stretched 
across the southeastern border of Kansas on that fateful Sep- 
tember day in 1856. 

A few minor collisions afterwards occurred, but they were 
(juite as much in the nature of personal encounters and for the 
satisfaction of personal animosities engendered by the political 
strife as otherwise, but the results were all one way, and even 
these soon ceased with the incoming tide from the North that 
soon after set in upon the cessation of hostilities, till the opposi- 
tion tinally abandoned all efi^orts to establish slavery in Kansas, 
and its more active adherents generally left the country ; many, 
hovrever, accepting the situation, remained to become peaceable 
and exemplary citizens of the new state. 

It was apparent, from the first, in view of the vast latent 
force to be drawn upon in the North, that the Kansas struggle 
must sooner or later end in the establishment there of a Free 
State that should fix there a definite and impassable limit to the 
westward spread of slavery, that it was logically, the Kansas 
struggle that set in motion, centralized and intensified the issue 
and the forces that finally made America all free. 

There is ground, too, for the suggestion that it was in good 
part the Milwaukee colony that proved one of the immediate 
and conclusive instrumentalities in the achievement in Kansas 
of the final victory in the field, and thus to the establishment 
of that limit which marked the final triumph of freedom in that 
territory, and it may be also said, in bringing on the resulting 
war of the Rebellion and the extirpation of slavery, in which 
war it was also my privilege to play a part as a soldier of the 
Union array, and also, subsequently to participate as a senator 
in Congress in sealing the verdict of the sword by legislation 
that forever prohibited the desecration of the soil of America 
by the tread of a slave. 

Thus it was that, forty years ago, the forces were set in motion 
which brought about the final settlement of a very grave public 
question — one upon which hung the basic principle of our form 
of democratic-republican government, and possibly the perpetu- 



ation of the Republic itself — as, with the great Southwest domi- 
nated by the institution and influence of a slavery propaganda, 
its predominance in the control of the government must inevita- 
bly in the end have forced the secession of the North, or the 
spread in some form of negro slavery into every portion of the 
country. 

So it may be said, and in a somewhat governing sense, that 
the expedition herein described was one of the direct and patent 
instrumentalities of saving not only the great Southwest from 
the presence of slavery, but the removal of an influence that, un- 
checked, would sooner or later have destroyed the Union itself. 

Edmund G. Ross. 

Albuquerque, New Mexico 
July, 1898. 



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